Trivial Matters

About two weeks ago I got a Blockbuster Online account to help with my “classic” movie catch-up. I used to have a Netflix account, but let it end before my last deployment. I went with Blockbuster this time because of the recommendation of friends, but so far I’m not feeling the love.

Netflix was very fast. The one-day turn around they advertise is pretty accurate. I had heard that Blockbust was just as fast, logging your movies back into the system the moment they hit the post office. As of now, though, it’s taking up to four days to receieve, process, and send a new movie, and an additional two days to recieve the new movie. That’s up to six days! In two weeks I’ve only received seven discs, and one of those was an in-store exchange. And it’s not like these discs are traveling far either. The address listed on the return envelope is a Portland PO box. They must have a processing center in town.

This isn’t to say that it is all bad. The in-store exchange feature is nice. I wanted something to watch Saturday, so I took in one of the discs and traded it for a new release, saving me $5 in the process.  I also noticed that they are currently processing a disc that doesn’t come out until tomorrow. I don’t know yet if it will ship today, to arrive on or after the release date, or if they’ll wait till tomorrow to ship it (adding another day to the wait). Update: According to the site, the disc shipped today with an “estimated” arrival date of Thursday.

I also don’t like the fact that their download feature only works on Windows (and only in IE or Firefox with an IE plugin). Where’s the Mac love? You know we can handle it. (And it’ll compete with iTunes, which can only be a good thing.)

I’ll hold onto the account for another month and see if there’s any improvement. After that, I may just go back to Netflix (and lose the in-store trade-in ability).

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